No mandate assured for Democrats, Republicans in 2013

An America more deeply divided than at any time since the Vietnam War era faces presidential and congressional elections this year calculated to break Washington’s partisan deadlock and resolve monumental issues: the size and proper role of the federal government in the national life and how to pay for it.

Ideally, the electorate’s decision this November will produce a clear political majority in Washington and something close to an agenda on spending and taxes, health insurance and the future of the huge entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

A mandate, in other words, for one party and its set of policies or the other party.

But none of that is assured. The campaign ahead could easily degenerate into a replay of what we’ve witnessed in Washington — partisan shouting matches that leave the great economic issues (the national debt and exploding social welfare costs) unresolved.

Indeed, the clash of the Republican presidential candidates in the debate run-up to the actual voting has, itself, been a kind of political “Animal House,” in which decorum has mostly disappeared, replaced by accusations of outright lying, covertly favoring big government or even, heaven forbid, “socialism.”

The hostilities officially begin on Tuesday evening, when thousands of Iowans brave winter weather to assemble in some 1,784 caucuses at homes, schools, auditoriums and libraries to indicate whom they favor for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.

On the Democratic side, it’s a formality; President Obama has no serious opposition. But among Republicans, it’s the biggest free-for-all in years.

A week later, New Hampshire will host the first primary nomination vote, with an important difference: Independents can vote in New Hampshire, not in Iowa. South Carolina will vote the following week, with Florida voters weighing in at the end of this month.

According to scenarios envisioned earlier in this race, especially among GOP optimists, the Republican scrum should be all but over after Florida, saving money for the fall election and limiting damage to the nominee. It’s an exercise in optimism rooted largely in the early belief that victory for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is “inevitable.”

Romney was, and remains, the favorite in New Hampshire, where he has a vacation home. And a Romney win in New Hampshire, coupled with victory in Iowa, would provide a one-two punch likely to dry up funds for his rivals and bring the nomination fight to a quick close.

But two developments have blown a hole in the Romney-is-inevitable scenario: first, the fierce resistance to Romney, a perceived moderate, among the GOP’s swelling far-right constituency (notably the tea party) and, second, the Lazarus-like rise of Newt Gingrich, a demon debater who has overshadowed his rivals in a series of television exchanges.

Romney still leads the polls in New Hampshire. His lead was sharply reduced by Gingrich until increasing again around Christmas Day. He had fallen behind the former House speaker in Iowa, where Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is now in the thick of it. And Gingrich has been holding a solid lead over Romney in South Carolina. So a Romney loss in New Hampshire would all but doom his campaign.

The muddled outlook in Iowa has been further confused in recent days by the surge from Paul, a libertarian and foreign policy isolationist. Iowa, the polls say, is up for grabs.

John O'Boyle/The Star-LedgerPresident Obama

THE WINNOWING PROCESS

Iowa and New Hampshire for decades were endowed with special importance in the nomination process. Historically, however, their chief role more often has been to eliminate the also-rans rather than to pick the ultimate winner.

At least in the Republican column lately, it’s South Carolina that has been the true bellwether. In the previous eight presidential elections, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980, the winner in South Carolina has gone on to win the GOP nomination.

Movement of the South Carolina primary to early in the calendar reflects the triumph of another “Southern strategy” — the determination by the GOP’s growing band of Dixie power brokers to offset the historic clout of the Republican establishment in the Northeast and the Midwest.

Culturally conservative South Carolina is especially significant, according to Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Report in Washington, D.C., because it so closely represents “the new base of the Republican Party.” The state is counted as a Gingrich stronghold.

But, assuming Romney wins New Hampshire, Rothenberg said, and “somebody not named Romney wins Iowa,” it’s Florida, culturally and economically more diverse than any of the other early states, that could prove to be the “decisive” contest.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRENGTH

Without a clear winner in these first four early states, the GOP faces a financially draining and potentially candidate-damaging battle in state primaries and caucuses across the country through the rest of the winter and spring. Romney, because of his edge in money and organization, seems best suited to survive a drawn-out struggle.

In contrast, Gingrich’s organizational weakness was laid bare last week when he failed to muster enough signatures to get on the Virginia primary ballot.

No one has a greater stake in the outcome of the Republican nomination fight than Obama.
The prevailing wisdom at the White House for months has been that Romney would be the most likely GOP winner and the tougher opponent. The recent surge by the mercurial Gingrich, however, has sent strategists in both parties back to the drawing board.

Rothenberg cites fear among the GOP’s Washington wing that the often-undisciplined Gingrich “could be a disaster.” But Romney, their preferred choice, is widely despised by many in the party’s right-wing base as a kind of false prophet, a conservative pretender.

Whoever takes the GOP prize, the Obama team seems committed to a single strategy: shape the campaign as something other than a referendum on the president and his record.

Their game plan is to frame the election as a choice between a progressive Democrat committed to the middle class and social welfare needs and a conservative Republican bent on shrinking government, cutting taxes and protecting big business and the wealthy.

POTENTIAL COATTAILS

In addition to the presidency, control of Congress will be decided this year, with one-third of the
Senate (now in Democratic hands) and all 435 seats in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives on the ballot.

A landslide win for either presidential candidate could make it a coattails election, carrying Senate and House candidates into office with the presidential winner and, theoretically at least, bringing an end to divided government in Washington.

But that’s far from assured, for the political divisions are almost as deep within the parties as between them. Harmonizing the message and rhetoric of the presidential nominees with their congressional tickets may prove a challenge for both parties.

Conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats in Congress differ regularly with Obama on spending, taxes and social issues. And both Gingrich and Romney, current leaders of the Republican pack, have encountered skepticism — Gingrich from religious conservatives put off by his multiple marriages and adulteries, Romney from fiscal conservatives who suspect he’s a closet moderate.

And what are the chances this election will finally bring some clarity to the über-issues that have dominated and divided Washington the past few years? Not good, according to Ross Baker, who teaches politics and government at Rutgers University.

It’s a situation that’s been with us, in one degree of another, since the Founding Fathers — “since the Federalist and the anti-Federalists,” Baker pointed out, “and it’s never been fully resolved.”